** Newest Chomsky - "The question of who rules Iraq remains the prime issue of contention. The US-backed opposition demands that the UN play a vital role in post-war Iraq and rejects US control of reconstruction or government (Leith Kubba, one of the most respected secular voices in the West, connected with the National Endowment of Democracy). One of the leading Shi'ite opposition figures, Sayed Muhamed Baqer al-Hakim, who heads the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), just informed the press that "we understand this war to be about imposing US hegemony over Iraq," and perceive the US as "an occupying rather than a liberating force." He stressed that the UN must supervise elections, and called on "foreign troops to withdraw from Iraq" and leave Iraqis in charge.

US policy-makers have a radically different conception. They must impose a client regime in Iraq, following the practice elsewhere in the region, and most significantly, in the regions that have been under US domination for a century, Central America and the Caribbean. That too is well-understood. Brent Scowcroft, National Security Adviser to Bush I, just repeated the obvious: "What's going to happen the first time we hold an election in Iraq and it turns out the radicals win? What do you do? We're surely not going to let them take over."



** Syrian FM: If US attacks, Israel will suffer

"Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk a-Shara said Sunday that if the United States decides to attack Syria, Israel will also be harmed as a result. Shara also rejected claims that Syria was providing shelter to senior Iraqi leaders, and said that the Americans "know well that these accusations have no basis."

[...]

"Asked whether Syria could face military action if it does not turn over Iraqi leaders, Bush said: "They just need to cooperate." Syria has been on the U.S. list of countries supporting terrorism for many years and some hawks in Washington say that after Iraq, the United States should set its sights on "regime change" in Syria and Iran."



** Rumsfeld, Schultz and Saddam - Why Donald Machiavelli went to war with old buddy Saddam

"The primary goal of Mr. Rumsfeld's visit to Baghdad was to improve relations with Iraq. But another matter was also quietly discussed. The powerful Bechtel Group in San Francisco, of which Secretary Shultz had been president before joining the Reagan administration, wanted to build an oil pipeline from Iraq to the Jordanian port of Aqaba, near the Red Sea. It was a billion-dollar project and the U.S. government wanted Saddam to sign off on it.

This remains, two decades later, a touchy subject. When I brought the matter up last week with James Placke, who in 1983 was a deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, he said, "My memory on that is kind of foggy."

[...]

"This unilateral war and the ouster of Saddam have given the hawks and their commercial allies carte blanche in Iraq. And the company with perhaps the sleekest and most effective of all the inside tracks, a company that is fairly panting with anticipation over oil and reconstruction contracts worth scores of billions of dollars, is of course the Bechtel Group of San Francisco."

Another retirement outlet of the corporation, including options and futures:

"We are not in the construction and engineering business. We are in the business of making money."

--Steve Bechtel Sr.

"Key Bechtel alumni are Reagan Secretary of Defense Casper Weinburger former Bechtel general counsel, and Reagan Secretary of State, George Schultz former Bechtel President, and current Bechtel board member. W. Kenneth Davis, former vice-president for nuclear development became Reagan’s deputy secretary of Energy and head of the Atomic Energy Commission under Reagan. William Casey, chairman of the Security and Exchange Commission under Nixon, head of the Export-Import bank under Ford, Reagan campaign manger and head of the CIA under Reagan was also a Bechtel consultant.

Richard Helm was CIA director under Nixon and eventually became a Bechtel consultant. White House political advisor Perter Flanigan under Nixon became a senior partner in the Bechtel-owned investment house Dillon, Read and Company. Robert L. Hollingsworth, AEC’s general manager under Nixon became manager of manpower services at Bechtel. Nixon Treasury secretary William Simon became a Bechtel consultant. Additionally, numerous friends of Bechtel, too long to list, many working in the AEC eventually ended up with Bechtel. The close collaboration between the AEC and Bechtel was "so incestuous it is impossible to tell where the public sector begins and the private one leaves off""



** New Statesman - "The Weird Men Behind George W. Bush's War" - America's allies and enemies alike are baffled. What is going on in the United States? Who is making foreign policy? And what are they trying to achieve? Quasi-Marxist explanations involving big oil or American capitalism are mistaken. Yes, American oil companies and contractors will accept the spoils of the kill in Iraq. But the oil business, with its Arabist bias, did not push for this war any more than it supports the Bush administration's close alliance with Ariel Sharon. Further, President Bush and Vice-President Cheney are not genuine "Texas oil men" but career politicians who, in between stints in public life, would have used their connections to enrich themselves as figureheads in the wheat business, if they had been residents of Kansas, or in tech companies, had they been Californians. Equally wrong is the theory that American and European civilisation are evolving in opposite directions. The thesis of Robert Kagan, the neoconservative propagandist, that Americans are martial and Europeans pacifist, is complete nonsense."